(I wrote this on 6/17/17)

I sit here trying to write my daughter’s obituary with a glass of vodka and no idea what I want to say. I KNOW what I’ll eventually say and write about her, all glowing things about her kind personality and the basic details of the short life she got to live. But the pain and anger I feel are what I really want to write about. Thinking about her and what I have to do in the coming week, I am not prepared for it. I don’t know how to bury my daughter and don’t have the slightest inclination on how to go about recovering from something so painful. I think about these past 9 months  and can’t believe that this journey has passed so quickly, I feel desperate to relive those days with her and do more to make the most of the seconds, minutes and hours we had together. Time has gone so quickly and I feel like I spent most of it trying to figure out how to slow it down.

The cruelty of this disease on me and my family is something that is still so hard to come to grips with. We were told that our daughter is going to die in the next 6-12 months and there is nothing that we can do about it. We had medical professionals tell us that this is all random and there isn’t any rhyme or reason to our bad fortune, just that our kid is the unluckiest of the unlucky children who are forced to endure cancer at such a young age. My wife lost her mother and now first child in the span of 14 months. My youngest daughter Emma lost her best friend and sister at 5 years old and now has to spend the rest of her life dealing with such a profound loss at such a young age. Finally, the hardest part of this bullshit is we have spent these past few weeks watching our daughter deteriorate daily until she couldn’t walk, talk or eat on her own. Watching a vibrant and wonderful 8-year-old girl lose everything that brought her happiness in life until her heart stopped and her body gave up.

She won’t get to go onto Junior High or High School or College, I won’t get to worry about her or celebrate her achievements, she will forever be an 8-year-old girl and I will spend the rest of my life working to preserve her memory and spirit. This is the pain that I don’t know if I will ever get past, not being able to see her grow up and become that wonderful person that (ever since she was 2) knew she was going to become.

After the loss of a loved one, people always say that they wake up in the mornings and for a second think that a loved one is still with them, I don’t have that, my first thought every morning is how she is gone, there is no confusion just an abrupt realization that she is no longer with me.All I can think about lately is how I would give everything for that split second other people get to think she was still with me. So with all the hurt and pain and anger that comes with this disease and the loss of Abigail, it has made this Father’s Day exceptionally cruel. This day will forever be a monument to my loss and all the joy that I have been robbed of.

So now I switch between writing her obituary, planning her services and writing this blog post. I know this will require some heavy editing but I got a thin sliver of peace being able to write it. I think that our next step in this terrible fucking journey will be looking for those slivers of peace and trying to figure out how to put them together,